Cinderella Skeleton is a humorous take on the classic Cinderella tale -- particularly when compared to the Disney
version. In this picture storybook, Cinderella Skeleton is a ghostly figure who battles her ugly step sister (skeletons)
for her chance to attend the Halloween Ball.
The rhyming text of Robert D. San Souci is tight and fun with clever language and puns. For example, "Cinderella
Skeleton - / It seemed her tasks were never done. / She hung cobwebs everyplace, / Arranged dead flowers in a vase, / Littered
the floor with dust and leaves, / Fed the bats beneath the eaves: / She had no time for rest or fun." The text follows
the traditional Cinderella tale in the order of events, making them predictable, but Cinderella Skeleton is anything
but predictable, and because of the Halloween slant it turns into a "graveyard romance" (Deveraux, 2000).
The watercolor illustrations create a flowing, ethereal atmosphere - with waif like skeletons floating from page to page.
The effect it creates is of another world - ghosts floating in and out of the text. The colors used are bright yet dark
- creating an "underworld" atmosphere. For example, a bright fiery yellow orange color is seen inside the ball room
when Cinderella Skeleton meets Prince Charnel, but that is combined with a grey blue exterior to the castle. The
skeletons themselves also give the illustrations a much darker feel, with their large, cavernous eyes.
This Cinderella story is a lot of fun -- using humor in both the text and the illustrations to make this picturebook
appropriate for school aged chidlren. My favorite bit of humor is when Cinderella's slipper falls off - ankle and all.
Then Prince Charnel "traveled everyplace / with her slippered foot in a velvet case."
San Souci, Roberth D. Cinderella Skeleton. Illus. by David Catrow. San Diego: Silver Whistle
- Harcourt, Inc., 2000. ISBN 0152020039.
